Oric atmos 48k at the end of 1984. At that time there were only Greek magazines to read the legendary PIXEL.After one and a half year started from me the commodore era : 64 , a500 , a1200Just recently acquired an atari STE to find out why we were arguing and fighting the commodorians and the atarians at that time.That were the good times. The development of hardware and software at its genesis

Sinclair QL, somewhere in 1983...and still BIG fan In this time QL was quite a revolution, no matter of some really bad flops - membrane keyboard, funny microdrives..But QDOS - that was some special (and stil it is in modern reincarnation call SMSQ/E).Never was too much in games, but remember how excited I was when I finished my first database app with Archive - database from Psion package come with every QL

And then I discovered Atari, TT actually, and use it, 'till now, in many formes - as real hardware, or through emulators:-)Of course, using M$ Windows for living (I was actually MCSE for all Windows and servers until Windows 8/8.1/10/Server 2008 >).Now using mostly TOS/MagiC/MultiTOS etc.. in collaboration with Linux through Aranym, and I'm perfectly satisfied with that:-)

I did made few games in GFA Basic for myself... First was Poker simulator like in "casinos", later I made "Operation Wolf"-like shooting game with graphics from Dilan Dog and finally I start, but never finish, remaking "Wet: The Sexy Empire" to Atari...

Incidentally the ZX81 really started my journey into programming... well... really it was my 1st debugging session (did not realised at that time either).Copied a game from a magazine and it would not run (because of typo in the printing, guess the editors also did not know programming).I then borrowed a senior's BASIC text book at school, looked up the function and errors and fixed a bunch of stuff.That ZX81 belonged to my friend and we were like playing the game after that, never realised I stepped into the computer programming world just like that until years later when I rethink how I got here.

Vic-20. First games were typed in from magazines and saved to tape, then there were few games on cartridges. I even got machine language cartridge for it, but didn't really use it that much for writing assembly.

Omega Race was my favorite Vic-20 game. For some reason the later C-64 version of that was really bad.

The first computer I ever personally owned was a 16K ZX Spectrum. This was upgraded to 48K a couple of years or so later, also with the Spectrum+ keyboard (as the machine was originally a rubber-key Spectrum and the membrane died on it.

Also had an Amstrad CPC 6128, but sold that shortly afterwards. See, software support was not that brilliant compared to what the machine itself is capable of. Demos such as Batman Forever, released a few years ago now, really showed the the Amstrad CPC systems are something special.

Then upgraded to an STFM in late 1988 or so. Have never looked back

Although I am still intrigued to see new demos on Spectrum and Amstrad CPC which are interesting.

The first game I bought was Jet Set Willy as I saw it in the local Spectrum shop (nothing to do with Sinclair) and loved that it had an 'Entrance to Hades' screen .

I was still at school and couldnt afford any other games after this apart from the £1.99 mastertronic titles.

I used to get C+VG until I discovered ZZap! 64 by about issue 5.

Soon after, I began coding in assembly. However, as I was a skint schoolboy, I couldnt afford an assembler, so had to painfully poke read in data values from basic corresponding to 6510 instruction/data!

Would have been sensible to code a simple assembler first, but I made a horizontal scrolling shoot em up instead! (I may still have the tape it was on somewhere. Took me forever! lol)

Got a used Apple IIe with green monitor and two floppies from dad's work for christmas 1986, with DOS 3.3, apple Works 1.2, and a few games. First favorite games were Karateka, E.T Comes Back and Space Raider. It made friends' C64 look like a toy, but monocrome screen was not as cool as theirs.

First real program I spent some time writing from scratch and was proud of was a word trainer for checking glossary homework, that saved the words and translations to textfiles on disk.

back in the 80's Atari 800 with a cassette drive and only 16K. Atari 800XL. Numerous ST's. Atari Falcon. Just got back into ST's. I have a 1040STe with 4 meg of ram and a Gotek. Star Raiders for the Atari 800 was the first game I played.

Lando_C wrote:Got a used Apple IIe with green monitor and two floppies from dad's work for christmas 1986, with DOS 3.3, apple Works 1.2, and a few games. First favorite games were Karateka, E.T Comes Back and Space Raider. It made friends' C64 look like a toy

I got ST in 1986. so C64 and Apple II and even Mac (with 9" 512x342 Screen) look like toy

btw I always wonder why anybody buy over priced Apple II, especial in mid/late 90s? How Apple was better then C64? I must admit that I never saw Apple II, here everebody had C64, ZX, Amstrad, even BBC, later STs and Amigas (only few Macs).

I bought an Atari 400 in 1981 with money I saved from a paper route. I read a lot of Antic and Analog. I think Basketball for the 400 was likely the first game I played on it. 4 joysticks and some friends made for some awesome fun.

calimero wrote:btw I always wonder why anybody buy over priced Apple II, especial in mid/late 90s? How Apple was better then C64? I must admit that I never saw Apple II, here everebody had C64, ZX, Amstrad, even BBC, later STs and Amigas (only few Macs).

If you just use a basic Apple II, sure that it can be compared to C64 or others. But the seven expansion ports made it far better (Ram expansion, coprocessor, sound cards, video cards, disks, etc). Sure that this was very expensive !

calimero wrote:btw I always wonder why anybody buy over priced Apple II, especial in mid/late 90s? How Apple was better then C64? I must admit that I never saw Apple II, here everebody had C64, ZX, Amstrad, even BBC, later STs and Amigas (only few Macs).

If you just use a basic Apple II, sure that it can be compared to C64 or others. But the seven expansion ports made it far better (Ram expansion, coprocessor, sound cards, video cards, disks, etc). Sure that this was very expensive !

While this is true, an Atari ST was cheaper than an Apple II, the Apple II I ever had the least bit of interest in was the IIGS.

Wayne123 wrote: While this is true, an Atari ST was cheaper than an Apple II,.

The ST (and Amiga/Mac) was really another world compared to the 8 bits machines of the past (C64, Amstrad, Apple II).Really faster, large memory, better OS, lots of connectors and wide range of applications that became possible.

The first computer I had unfettered access to was a TRS-80 Tandy Color Computer. There wasn't much you could do with it back then, and not much information available about tinkering with computers. I wanted to use it to control my MIDI keyboard, but never did figure out a way to do it.

This was in sweden. I was 10 years old in 1986, dad bought a used cheap apple from work, when they upgraded. Same with STFm, a friend bought STE in 1991, i bought his old STFM in 1992. Dad had a 386at home in 1991 or -2 i guess. In 1994 we got a 14400 modem and I discovered late remains of BBS:es and fidonet, and then internet happened.